


Proxy

by cagestark



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Adult!Peter Parker, Fucking by Proxy, I'm Coining That, M/M, Sex workers, Tony/Peter is Endgame - Freeform, if not, if that's a thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-10
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2020-12-07 20:23:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20981825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cagestark/pseuds/cagestark
Summary: Peter wants to know if Mr. Stark knows, like, anybody who’d be willing to make out with him. Things escalate from there





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> have fun

“Mr. Stark?” Peter asks.

It pulls Tony from his work, head coming up to blink owlishly at the kid. Peter sits at a table across the room, textbooks from his classes at NYU spread out along the table littered with pencils and papers, though it has all been pushed aside so the kid can plant his elbow on the table and lean on it, staring off into space (the space that just happens to be in Tony’s general direction). “What is it, Pete?”

“When did you have your first kiss?”

Tony thinks, stretching his mind back. “I was twelve. So, ’82, ’83.”

“_Twelve_?”

“What?”

“Well, isn’t that a little young?”

Tony smiles wryly. “I did everything a little young. You could say I was quite—ah—_advanced_ for my age. Why?”

“I still haven’t had mine.”

Tony shrugs. He hunches back over and pick up the soldering pen, nudging the blazing tip at the copper wires. His hands are shaking, something about the kid’s admission. He’s nineteen years old, and still no first kiss? Tony’s no judge of normality, but it does seem a little delayed. Still, he’s not one to shame someone else for their sexual activities (or lack thereof). “Everyone moves at their own pace, kid. I don’t know what to tell you.”

“I feel like I’m missing out,” Peter admits. He picks up a pencil and twirls it between his long fingers—_why_ is Tony watching the kid’s hands when he’s holding a goddamn soldering iron? God, Tony’s distractible mind is going to get him burned. Literally. Worse: figuratively. “Everyone at university talks about their hook-ups and stuff. It sounds like…”

“Like?” Tony prods. Just like how he prods the wires.

“Like I’m missing out.”

“On sex.”

Peter’s face flushes—_look down, Tony, Christ_. “I mean—yeah? But I’m so far away from that. Like, so, so far. I mean, I did kiss a girl once, but it was like—” Peter puckers his lips, squeezing his eyes shut tightly. Tony is obliged to look, he contents himself with that knowledge. Freckles dust the kid’s nose, and he looks so painfully childish. It’s endearing, even if it makes some part of his stomach churn, like he’s swallowed one too many cocktails made of one-part perversion and two parts disgust. Shaken, not stirred.

“Find a girl—”

“Or guy,” Peter chimes, helpfully.

“Or a guy—or a non-binary babe, and french them. That’s all it takes.”

“Believe it or not, not many people are jumping at the chance to like, make out with me, Mr. Stark,” Peter mutters. He twirls the pencil too much and it slips from between his fingers and skids off the table. Smooth.

Tony sits down the soldering pen. He studies the kid—hard. Peter has clear skin for a boy still clinging to his teen years. His eyes are gold like a glass of whiskey left to sit in the sunshine, the brows flat and a little unruly. He’s got curls which are adorable. All in all, a very sincere and baby-faced young man. Tony can see why the girls and boys at university might not look at the kid and want to jump into bed with him. The priorities of young people these days are different.

Jesus, Tony sounds like an old man. He feels like an even _older_ (dirtier) old man when he thinks about how those things don’t change Peter’s attractiveness to him at all. The face might be babyish, but the jawline is cut. He knows from sparring in the gym and passing each other in the Avengers’ locker room that the kid has an eight-pack that most people his age would kill for. Beyond all that, he knows _Peter_, knows the kid’s heart, the generosity, the warmth, the bravery.

“Most people are stupid,” Tony says much too honestly. “Anyone would be lucky to be with you, Pete.”

Peter’s face lights up. Tony scrambles for the soldering pen. He needs all the excuses he can get to avoid looking at that handsome, joyful face. Peter asks: “Do you mean that? I mean, do you really think so?”

Tony makes a noise that he hopes conveys everything reasonable and acceptable that the kid wants to hear.

“I just think if I had some practice, I don’t know, maybe I could _reel_ someone in.”

“If I look up and you’re really pretending to reel in a fishing rod, I’m going to throw you out of my lab,” Tony mutters, squinting at the wires. When he glances up, it’s just in time to see Peter lowering his hands demurely to his lap, eyes far too wide for him to have been doing anything but pretending so. Tony shakes his head, snorting. “You’ve found the paradox. To attract somebody, you need practice. To practice, you need somebody. The absolute woes—Thank God I’m not nineteen anymore.”

“You’re Tony Stark,” Peter says, and Tony can hear him rolling his eyes just from the tone of his voice. “I doubt you had any of these troubles when you were nineteen. Or, like, ever.”

Tony’s lips fight not to smile. “You might be right. Okay, so, attraction. Practice. Let’s brainstorm some solutions—”

“Do you think Steve would kiss me?”

_Okay_—Tony burns himself. The wound cauterizes instantly at least, which is nice, but it stings like a son of a bitch. Tucking the throbbing thumb into his mouth, he shuts down the soldering pen because obviously he can’t be trusted around both Peter and dangerous machinery. The words Peter spoke bang around in his head like a quarter in a washing machine.

“Steve who?” Tony asks.

Peter presses his thin lips together. He drops his eyes to the pencil he’d retrieved from the floor, twirling it anxiously between his fingers. “You know. Steve—um—Cap-Captain America?”

“You want to make out with Captain America.”

“Or Thor. I could do Thor—_kiss_ Thor! Oh my god. I could kiss Thor.”

“Am I in a fever dream?” Tony asks. He makes a show of pinching himself. “FRIDAY, am I have a stroke?”

“Not that I can detect, boss,” his girl says, unhelpfully.

“Well _find_ me a stroke, FRI, so that I can have it. ASAP.”

“Mr. Stark,” Peter groans, dropping his face into his hands. “Stop. You’re making fun of me.”

“Making—? I’m not making fun of you. This is me being traumatized at the thought of Steve doing anything more PG than holding hands.”

“I just—I thought maybe a more experienced person—friend, I mean. I thought maybe they’d be willing to help me out. You know. Take one for the team.” The kid looks so miserable that Tony feels his heart squeeze. With that look on his face, Peter could ask anything of him, and Tony would bend over backwards, alter timelines, break his own moral code to give it to him.

But Peter didn’t ask _him_.

“Kid. Peter—I’m sorry. You’re right. It’s a good idea, I think. But Steve probably doesn’t have as much experience as you’d like, and Thor is on Asgard. We’re only supposed to summon him under threat of galactic peril.”

The intensity of Peter’s stare makes Tony feel like there’s a joke he’s missing out on. It isn’t a feeling he’s privy too, often, and thank God he’s not, because it makes his skin prickle uncomfortably. “Well then what are my other options, Mr. Stark?” Peter asks, eyes wide and guileless.

Tony swallows. “Let me—give me ten minutes.”

-

“I don’t know whether to be offended or honored,” Natasha says, lounging on Tony’s sofa. She’s dressed in casual clothes, a t-shirt maybe best for sparring, yoga pants and fuzzy socks, because she always has cold feet. Always. She looks beautiful, stunning, sensual in the lazy way she lays against the dark leather, but Tony knows that’s just instinct to her. It’s not for his benefit.

Peter stands behind Tony, one hand tangled into his curls and tugging on them anxiously.

“Can I make a suggestion?” Tony says. “Because I’d say _honored_—I mean—”

“Stop talking, Tony,” she says, lips twitching.

“I would,” says Tony. “But I really do want to explain my choice to Peter.”

Natasha waves a hand magnanimously, even as her eyebrows raise, the picture of honed skepticism.

“Pete, we’ve got a handful of Avengers on the continent, so Natasha immediately gets a point for proximity. She’s—and I swear to _God_, under threat of torture I will deny having said this—but she’s got the biggest heart of all of us. Even if she says no, I knew she wouldn’t laugh you out of house and home, and she wouldn’t spread it around for gossip’s sake. Also, I have it on good authority that Natasha has never been bad at anything in her life, so more than likely, she’s going to suck your brain out from between your teeth.”

“If she says yes,” Peter says.

After which, they both turn toward her. She looks surprisingly moved (let it be known that Tony can give quite the stirring speech when moved to). Behind her pale eyes, Tony can see the cogs of her brain churning, always churning. Her glance flickers between them several times, and her lips are curving, curving, and Tony has a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach—

“You’ve overlooked one thing,” Natasha says.

“What’s that?”

She flicks a finger at Tony. “You have the Avenger most skilled _orally_ right there. Why isn’t Tony helping you?”

It’s—yeah. It’s worse than Tony imagined it could be. Not that it isn’t a question he hasn’t asked himself twenty times during the brief call he made asking her to meet them up in his penthouse. Behind him, Peter makes a noise that Tony can’t translate from teenager to English. It sounds a little horrified which shouldn’t offend Tony as much as it does. Then again, Tony feels a lot of things for Peter that he shouldn’t these days.

“Because he didn’t ask me,” Tony says. Let the room make of that what it will. Everyone holds their breath, a stare-down of epic proportions taking place, a duel with no guns, they’ve met at high noon outside the saloon doors and all Tony wants to do is hop on his horse and ride off into the painted sunset. But he can’t. Because Peter asked for his help, and he _can’t tell the kid no._

“Alright,” Natasha says at length. She shifts to the farthest couch cushion and pats the space next to her. “Come here, Peter.”

Peter looks far younger than his age of nineteen when he crosses the room, one shoe untied, wearing a graphic tee and skinny jeans, face redder than Tony’s suit. He’s wringing his hands even as he sits down on the couch cushion, deciding that he’s too far away and scooting closer only to second guess himself and scoot back again. The space between them is probably enough for Tony to sit—and okay, not a mental image he needs.

“Lesson one,” Natasha says seriously. “Good oral hygiene.”

“I—I figured the first lesson would be something like, don’t be nervous.”

She stares at him flatly. “You’re always going to be nervous. That lessens with 1. practice. 2. security with your partner. And 3. good oral hygiene. _Does my breath stink? Can they taste what I had for lunch?_ Those are the last thoughts you want to be thinking when you’re trying to kiss someone. Brush regularly, and if you can, always carry gum.”

“I don’t have any gum,” Peter admits.

Natasha smiles, soft and indulging. “I do, don’t worry.”

She and Peter each takes a stick of peppermint gum, and when Natasha holds the pack out to him too, eyes glittering (“What,” she says. “It’d be rude not to offer you some as well.”) Tony realizes that it’s a little preposterous: his presence here. They don’t need him. Peter might even be more nervous with Tony watching, if the looks the kid keeps shooting him are any indication. Tony should leave. He should definitely leave.

He sits in the armchair, tucking the gum wrapper into the back pocket of his jeans.

While they chew, they make awkward small talk. Peter dodges any questions about who he might be trying to learn kissing techniques for, Tony dodges any question that make might him reveal his proclivity for the young man on the sofa, and Natasha looks like she knows everything, lips tilted upwards into a perpetual smirk. At last they all spit out their gum (not Tony, because Tony isn’t going to be kissing anyone, _certainly_ not kissing Peter, thanks).

“Breath nice and fresh, now. Guaranteed. See how that’s one thing off your mind, now?”

Peter does look more noticeably upbeat. “Yes, you’re right. Thanks, Ms. Romanov.”

“You can call me Natasha, Peter. We’re going to get rather close. Now come here—” She urges Peter closer until their thighs are pressed together, and then their knees when she encourages him to turn towards her. “Lesson two, where to put your hands.”

She takes his hand—Peter has very nice hands, thin, fine boned, dexterous, so _soft_ looking—and turning his hand to be palm up, cups her jaw with it. Peter’s fingers disappear back into her hair, and his thumb rests along the smooth skin of her cheek. Peter is holding his breath. Tony can tell, because Tony can’t take his eyes off of him.

“This is a good place to start with. It’s nice to touch your partner when kissing them, because it makes you feel more present, it makes the moment more intimate. There are—_other_—places you could touch them, but this one is nice and sweet and unlikely to offend someone if you’re still feeling each other out. Okay?”

Peter nods, head bobbing furiously. Tony might be holding his breath too. Who knows. Not him.

“Lesson three: caution and adaptation. You can’t hurt anything by starting off slow. You can always turn up the heat, but it isn’t as easy to dial it down, especially if you come on so strong that you turn your partner off. Listen to their cues—most people will unconsciously try to tell you want they want.

“Are you ready for the practical?”

“I—” Peter swallows. He glances at Tony, who can do nothing but shrug. “Yeah. Let’s—do it.”

Natasha matches Peter’s hold on her, reaching out to dip the tips of her fingers into those curls, to run her fingers along the strong line of his jaw and Tony finally feels it: the sourness in his stomach of jealousy, the aching desperation to be in her place. He wraps up all those emotions and tucks them into a trunk in the back of his mind, closes the trunk, and loses the key. Hopefully.

Slowly but firmly, Natasha draws them together. She kisses Peter. Their heads slant naturally to the right, and the first press is soft and chaste. They part just a hairsbreadth and then kiss again, this time their mouths just barely parted. Tony catches a flash of pink tongue (almost assuredly Natasha’s), and then Peter makes a noise from the back of his throat: a tender little whine that makes Tony swallow.

He can’t help but glance down and—oh. The kid is hard. There’s no hiding the bulge in his skinny jeans. To be honest, Tony can hardly blame him: he’s feeling a little tingly down south himself, mostly after that sweet sound the young man made. It backs up theoretical data Tony has already been compiling (from when the kid groans when he eats something particularly tasty at the Avengers’ communal dinner table to when he whines when Ned beats him at a video game on the console Tony had made for them). What Tony is compiling that data for is—confidential.

Now that he’s noticed the kid’s erection, his eyes can’t help but bounce between it and the sensuality of Peter’s kiss with Natasha. Tongue is obviously involved now: their mouths are open, cheeks hollow, and Natasha reaches up to coax Peter’s hand back towards her hair where he tangles his fingers in it, pulling her closer until she has to kneel up to avoid falling right on the kid’s lap.

She parts long enough to say, “Don’t forget to breath.”

The kid is panting, nodding furiously, already pressing back to her mouth. This time Tony catches a hint of _his_ tongue and has to look pointedly above their heads for several long moments to collect himself. It almost doesn’t work, not with the soft sensual wet sounds that come from their mouths. How the fuck did Tony get himself in this situation, practically pimping out the young man who he is far too emotionally and physically and spiritually and intellectually (and all the other _lly’s)_ interested in?

His life is ridiculous.

He looks back at them.

He can’t stop watching.

Natasha takes the kid lower lip onto her mouth and sucks on it. Peter’s eyelashes flutter, chest hitching. The bulge at the crotch of his jeans twitches. But ever the good student, he then tries the same move on her, taking that full lower lip into his mouth and suckling, then his lips draw back just a little and Tony sees _teeth_—he is _biting_ her lip, and Natasha’s mouth curves just a little into a smile. When they pull apart, their mouths are wet and red. Peter is panting, and Natasha’s hair is mussed.

Tony is barely managing to keep from being hard.

“How was that, Pete?” Nat asks.

“I guess I should be asking you,” Peter says, sound more than a little breathless. “Did I do okay? Any tips, pointers, criticism? _Compliments_?”

Natasha laughs. Tony thinks it might be an honest-to-God laugh, one that bubbles up from somewhere inside her chest. He can’t help but smile at the sound of it, at the way it makes Peter duck his head, press one palm to his mouth to disguise his smile. Natasha reaches out and pulls his head to her bosom, giving Tony a look over his head that says, _how fucking precious is he? _

Tony rolls his eyes.

Pretty fucking precious.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there are chances that sex work will soon be decriminalized in NYC, but for now it is illegal. treat everyone with respect. act safely and kindly.

Whatever the hell _that_ was—Tony can’t seem to put it behind him. It should be easy. All he did was hook up the young man he’s mad for with a beautiful woman. That’s normal. People do that all the time. So what if he watched them suck each other’s souls out. So what if he saw the kid hard. Big deal. Not the weirdest thing to ever happen to Tony. Not by far.

But he can’t stop thinking about it. The number of inappropriate erections (and really, there is no _appropriate_ erection when it comes to pining after your nineteen-year-old mentee and teammate) he’s found himself sporting at all hours of the day increases exponentially. The seedy part of his mind that files away Peter’s orgasmic sounds is now teeming with new data: the flash of the young man's pearly teeth, the glimpse of pink tongue, the whine—

Tony is having more wet dreams now than he has in the last fifteen years combined. He fixes that by not sleeping. Genius solution.

He almost convinces himself that it’s sleep deprivation on Saturday when Peter returns from university, when he raises his chin and sets his jaw and asks if Tony _knows like, anyone who would be willing to have sex with him._

“FRIDAY—”

“No stroke, boss.”

“Is that crazy to ask?” Peter says, pulling at his hair. “Who am I kidding, that’s like, _totally_ crazy. Oh my God. I’m so sorry Mr. Stark. Please pretend I didn’t say anything.”

“I’m actually not completely convinced that I heard you correctly in the first place, so run it by me one more time.”

“I just—the kissing lesson, it worked out really well. But, I’ve still got no other experience. I mean, obviously I’m a—a _virgin_,” Peter says. His face is red as a tomato. “There’s so much pressure! Everybody says that the first time has to be with someone special and it’s going to mean so much and all the build up has me so nervous I just want to be sick. I want to get it over with.”

“So.”

“So I was wondering if, you knew anybody who would be willing to be my…my first. _Time_. You know.”

Tony rubs at his forehead. Stroke or not, he’s getting a headache. His mind feels fit to bursting, and the whole thing makes him vaguely sick. What the fuck is he supposed to say to this? Part of him wants to tell Peter to go out the old-fashioned way: pick up a person at a fucking bar or something for God’s sake. But this is Peter. His Peter. Not _his_ Peter—but totally his Peter. Does he want the kid in a bar, buying some stranger drinks? Does he want Peter’s first time (and yeah, maybe it’s not such a big deal as some people make it out to be, but it’s all relative anyway, and the point is that Peter feels vulnerable about it), does he want to leave it up to some fumbling college student?

“I—I’ll make a call.”

But ten seconds with his phone in his hand has him coming back into the room. He gets the briefest glimpse of Peter sitting hunched over with his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands, muttering something under his breath before the kid looks up, eyes wide and wild.

“What kind of genitals are we talking about?” asks Tony.

“_What_?”

“I literally don’t know how to be more straightforward than that. Gender—sex—personal preferences for genitals and orientations. Because, to be perfectly honest, right now Natasha is at the top of my list again. What do you think?”

“Actually, I—I want a man. A cis man, I guess—the, you know, the penis—”

“You want a penis.”

“I mean, yeah, ideally. I’m pansexual but, I kind of want to—” Peter trails off, mumbling.

“I’m getting old, Peter, speak up—”

“I want to _bottom_. Oh my God, could I like, drop dead right now? _Please_?”

Tony is wondering the same thing—about himself. Peter wants a dick in his ass. Okay. Nothing wrong with that. Not like Tony hasn't taken a few himself in his time. Tony has a perfectly functioning sex organ that could absolutely fit the parameters that Peter is looking to fill, but there’s no reason to bring _that_ up. Because surely if the kid was interested in _Tony_, he’d come out and say something.

“And sex workers, are you yay, nay—?”

“I mean, MJ says that s-sex is a service—”

“Got it. Go get some water. Lay down. Are you about to pass out right now? Jesus, kid, take a breath.”

Tony makes some calls. Sex work is still illegal in New York City, but Tony knows plenty of people who indulge. As long as everything is safe and consensual, Tony could care less; he figures he has real crimes to worry about. A friend leads him to a friend who recommends a man closer to Peter’s age than either of them are to Tony, and the description is, well, everything Tony could hope for, for Peter’s partner: blonde, built, flexible (“and I mean that in many ways, Tony, _many_ ways,” his friend had guaranteed), and talented enough.

He can be at the penthouse in two hours.

Upstairs, Peter is literally shaking.

“You don’t have to do this,” Tony says. “I can call him off. _You_ can call him off, at any time. There’s nothing wrong with waiting, kid, and there’s nothing wrong with being nervous about your first time. That just means it’s important to you.”

“I’m not backing out,” Peter says. His eyes are ablaze, even if they can’t catch on Tony’s for longer than a few moments at a time.

Tony feels like he’s leading the kid to the gallows. He turns away to plant his hands flat on the glossy wood of the bar and berate himself. “This is not normal,” Tony mutters.

“Nothing about my life ever is,” Peter says. When Tony glances over his shoulder, the kid gives a smile that (while it is shaky) is genuine. It hits Tony then, that this young man he’s infatuated with is actually going to fuck someone else, _thanks to Tony_. Of all the stupid, convoluted plans that Tony has cooked up or carried out, this one is truly up there with the worst of them. His self-destructive strategies are downright legendary. This is one for the goddamn books.

“Boss?” FRIDAY says. “A Mr. Finch is here. Shall I direct him to the penthouse?”

Tony looks to Peter. Peter nods.

“Go ahead, baby,” Tony says to her.

He braces a hand on the kid’s shoulder, lest he blow away in the draft from the air conditioning vent. Peter leans into the touch. This is Tony’s life. He gets to put warm fatherly hands on the kid’s shoulder while the man who fucks him rides up in the elevator.

When the doors part, there is a very handsome twenty-eight-year-old on the other side. He is taller than Tony and Peter, obviously well taken care of: dressed nicely, groomed, with soft looking hair and eyes cornflower blue. His clothes are well tailored to display his fit body, and Tony stands them side by side internally, measures them up so he can see all the ways that he falls short. This is the best choice for Peter. Peter deserves someone like _this_, not some broken old man.

“I take it you’re Peter?” the guy says. He’s got a bag slung over his shoulder that he shifts to reach out and shake Peter’s hand, and the size difference between the two makes Tony swallow. The man flashes Tony a smile. He teases warmly: “I know who _you_ are.”

“Most do,” Tony says. Tony ignores the outstretched hand. Still, he feels slimy. "Tony."

“I’m Daniel. Are you joining us?”

Tony nearly chokes. “No—just handing him off into your expert hands—”

“Mr. Stark,” Peter says lowly. “Could I, could I talk to you about something?”

They leave Daniel on the sofa and convene behind the bar, standing close enough to whisper without being overheard. Tony literally can’t imagine what else Peter could want from him, maybe a blood oath, maybe Tony’s heart or head on a platter. But what the kid asks for is actually so, so much worse.

“Will you stay, Mr. Stark?” Peter looks at him with huge, swimming eyes. “I’m—I’m nervous. I’d just feel better if I wasn’t alone.”

“You want me to stay.”

“I mean. Yeah.”

“You want me to be in the room while you fuck Abercrombie and _Finch_ over there?”

Peter groans, pressing his palm to his eyes. “Okay, never mind, you’re right, that’s way too much. You’ve already done so much for me, and of course you wouldn’t want to be there, that’s, like, that’s gross right? It’s just, I know you’d never let anything happen to me, and—”

The problem is that Tony can’t ever tell the kid no.

That’s how he ends up in the armchair of his largest guest bedroom watching Steve Roger’s Jr. and Peter sitting on the bed together, talking.

“A virgin? Oh, that’s awesome,” Daniel says. He's got a surfer vibe going to him, much better suited for Malibu than New York City. 

“Really?” Peter asks flatly.

“Yeah. Virgins are really great partners: very teachable, very thoughtful. You get a guy who’s been having sex for years and they think they’re sex Gods or something, they think the way they’ve been doing it is the right way, just because they’ve been doing it for so long,” Daniel blathers. Tony squints. This punk isn’t talking about him, right? He’s not even glancing at Tony (except for sometimes, when he smiles soft and sweet). Surely, it’s just Tony’s own raging insecurities. He’s not like those people. He’s fucking Tony Stark. Adaptation is his middle name.

“That, actually that makes me feel a little better. Thanks,” Peter says. His hands are clasped in his lap, knuckles white. “Do we need to talk about anything else, like, like protection and stuff?”

“Condoms are a must, and I brought my own, I hope that’s okay.”

“Yeah, of course—”

“I’m down for giving or receiving oral and anal, down for any light kink. No means no—if one of us says no, we stop. You trust me to do that and I trust you, that’s what this partnership is all about.”

“That sounds fair,” Peter says. Tony agrees from where he’s wishing to become a ghost in the corner. He idly wishes that maybe the floor will open up and swallow him whole, but Tony has never been so lucky. “I kind of want to _receive_, I guess. If that’s okay.”

“Of course. Don’t worry, Peter, I’ll do all the heavy lifting. You just relax and have a good time. Do you want to get started?”

“I mean, okay.”

Daniel ducks his neck, takes Peter’s chin in his hand and kisses him. This is worse, so much worse than watching him be with Natasha, because at least Tony _likes_ Natasha, knows and trusts her. At least Tony knows the kind of person she is and that she wouldn’t take Peter’s vulnerability for granted. This stranger doesn’t even know the kind of gift Peter is giving him.

Peter seems receptive enough. Tony can almost see the cogs in Peter’s mind working while he remembers everything he learned with Natasha. Delicately, his hand comes up to rest on Daniel’s jaw, and the blond man hums. Their heads turn more, cheeks hollowing as their lips part and tongues touch. Suddenly Peter breaks off the kiss, pulling back a little, eyes fluttering open. He goes back in—but then he breaks off again, a little furrow forming between his eyebrows.

“Too much tongue,” Tony mutters, more to himself than anyone else.

Daniel breaks the kiss, glancing over to the shadows where Tony is gathering dust like a perverted, decrepit vampire. The guy’s lips are slick and pink from how rough he’s been, and they’ve only been kissing for a minute or two. “Sorry, did you say something?”

Tony clears his throat. He waves a hand towards them. “You’re using too much tongue—the kid’s not into it.”

Daniel blanches. He looks to Peter who ducks his head, face red.

“It was great,” Peter says. “Just—wet.”

“Okay,” Daniel says, slow. “Less tongue. Got it.”

When they resume kissing, it’s obvious that the blond is taking Tony’s advice to heart. The kissing seems softer, more sensual, and Peter begins to shift on the lush bedspread like he’s antsy and can’t keep still. The erection he’s sporting might have something to do with that. Tony can’t help but be a little hard himself after a while, when the kid starts making these cute little noises in the back of his throat that Daniel swallows whole, when Peter shifts and kneels up a little until the two are equal height and Daniel pulls him onto his lap. He looks so tiny there, probably resting flush up against Daniel’s hard cock—because of course the guy will be hard, who wouldn’t get hard with such a sweet young man in their lap kissing them so feverishly?

Daniel coaxes Peter onto his back. His dark clothes blend into the dark bedspread, but Tony knows that when he’s naked (and okay, okay, somehow Tony didn’t even _think_ of that, didn’t _think_ that he’d been seeing the kid naked which now that he acknowledges it is quite obvious but also both terrifying and arousing), anyway, when the kid is naked, his skin is going to glow it will be so pale spread against the black sheets.

Tony lifts one leg to rest the ankle on his knee and hopefully obscure his hard on, because for some reason the kid keeps glancing over to Tony with this _look_ on his face, like he’s wondering, Am I doing okay? Is this okay? Tony has no answers for those questions, because Daniel is pushing up the hem of Peter’s t-shirt exposing that pale midriff, the light pink nipples that are already pebbled from arousal. On his back like this, Peter’s erection is more obvious, a nice average sized bulge in his skinny jeans that makes him hiss whenever Daniel brushes against it.

The jealousy is intense. Worse is just the _longing_, the desperation to cross that room and push the blond aside and place the most sensual, sucking kisses along that torso, to feel the weight of the Peter’s cock against his palm.

This will ruin Tony; he knows it. There will never be a chance of recovery from this, not when he knows how the kid looks and sounds in the throws of passion.

This will change everything.

Daniel reaches Peter’s nipples and licks across one with the flat of his tongue. Peter keens, his hips jerking upward desperate for friction. God, Peter’s so sensitive (and couldn't Tony have already guessed that from 'senses dialed to eleven'?), tangling his fingers in the bedsheets, eyes squeezed shut, mouth fallen open just from someone tonguing at his nipples. Tony can’t help but watch his expression as he pants—but then the furrow between his flat brows is back, mouth pinching together. Tony flicks his eyes down to Daniel who is _biting_ at what is surely one of Peter’s most sensitive places—

“Stop,” Tony says.

Daniel jerks back like he’s been stung, glancing over his shoulder at Tony, face exasperated. Beyond him, Tony sees Peter’s face though, and it is relieved. It is grateful. It is trusting, those whiskey eyes burning into Tony’s, mouth curling up a little. “What is it now?” Daniel asks.

“He’s sensitive—”

“Are you _sure_ you don’t want to join us?”

“—just be gentler with him, look at him, he doesn't like it when you—”

“He’s liking it just fine,” Daniel says, reaching down to squeeze at Peter’s cock pointedly. The kid yelps.

Tony stands up, one heartbeat away from activating his suit, because that did not sound like a yelp of pleasure—the blond must see the expression on Tony’s face because his hands fly upwards. _Stop, don’t shoot!_

“I get it,” Daniel says quickly. “More gentle. Sensitive. Noted.”

Immediately Tony feels like a fucking idiot. What was he going to do, blow the guy away with one of his gauntlets? He resumes his seat, determined not to say another word. He’s just supposed to be here for moral support, a flower on the wall.

“I like it,” Peter pants. His face is bright red even in the dim lighting.

“You like what, baby?” Daniel asks. The guy glances over his shoulder at Tony, brow raised, a pointed _see?_ that makes Tony want to light him up. “Me being a little rough?”

Peter blushes. “No—um. When Mr. Stark tells you how to do it.”

That revelation silences the room and holds it in anticipation for several long moments. Tony’s mouth goes dry, cock aching between his legs. Daniel looks baffled, glancing from Peter sprawled on the bed to Tony in the armchair with all the caution of a man walking a minefield.

“I—okay?” Daniel says. He looks to Tony, shrugging a shoulder. “You cool with that?”

Tony rubs at the space between his eyebrows. How to say that _no he’s not fucking okay with it!_ but also, it's going to make him harder than he's ever been. He’s yet to perfect how to say two opposing things in the same breath, though. This is all too much, it’s crossing lines he never even imagined approaching (alright, there might have been some imagining, but certainly no concrete steps taken). As he opens his mouth to say no, he spots the look on the kid’s face: anxious, eager, imploring.

And he can’t tell this kid _no_.

“Alright,” says Tony.

“Are you sure, Mr. Stark?” Peter breaths. He’s still hard. “I know this is so, so weird.”

“It’s like you said, kid, our whole lives are weird. Okay—well—go on, I guess. Action?” Tony claps his hands like a fucking clapperboard.

Daniel’s mouth twitches. “What should I do? _Mr. Stark_.”

In for a penny, in for a pound, Tony thinks. “Put your mouth back on his nipples, but be gentle with him this time. He’s sensitive. Whatever you’re thinking of as sensitive, you probably aren’t even close. It won’t take much just—” Daniel is following his direction, leaning down to lick a sweet, soft line over Peter’s left nipple. He takes it into his mouth and suckles at it, all soft and sweetness, and Peter whines, his hands coming up to clutch at the blond strands of hair. “There you go. See? That’s—that’s how he likes it.

“Switch, don’t overstimulate him too soon. He's likely to get overwhelmed by new stimulus. Use your hand to flick—yes, there you go. Gentle. He’s—” _Precious_, Tony thinks. He swallows. “He’s delicate.”

“_Am not_,” Peter moans, drawing the words out. His hips arch upwards, but Daniel is to the side of him and not looming over him, so there’s nothing for Peter’s aching cock to rub against.

“Shirt off,” Tony says. His mouth is so dry, he’d kill for a whiskey, neat. “It’s getting in the way.”

They sit up, puppets under his control. Let no one say that Tony doesn’t have control issues, that he doesn’t enjoy people following his explicit instructions, because all of this has him even harder than he thought himself possible to be without any physical stimulus, leaking precum in his pants, balls throbbing in time with his heart. Peter’s head disappears and then reappears as the shirt is tugged up and off, his curls rustled and messy. His eyes are heavy lidded—_looking over Daniel’s shoulder at Tony. _

“Kiss his neck,” Tony says, hopeful to get the kid to shut his eyes. That gaze is doing nothing healthy to him. “You know the drill. If you suck, suck softly. He bruises easily.”

Peter does shut his eyes, his head tilting back, mouth open in a silent sigh of pleasure. He shudders when Daniel kisses at the spot behind his ear, nipples beading to tiny aching points on his chest. “Please,” Peter breathes.

Tony inhales sharply. His hands are shaking where he clutches at the armrests of the chair to keep from palming his own cock. “Press him back down into the bed—lay over him. Give him something to grind up against. He’s needy.”

“What if he cums?” Daniel asks, already following instructions. Peter keens, his hips rutting up, ankles coming around to hook behind the older man's legs. Daniel mirrors him with a long groan, their hard cocks rubbing together, dry humping like two desperate teenagers instead of one. Meanwhile, Tony sits with the Eiffel Tower between his legs, trying to pretend like it isn’t even there.

“Hold off, Peter,” Tony says. His voice comes out a little harder than he intends it to, but the kid just nods furiously, eyes squeezed shut.

Peter whines unhappily, slowing his hips and letting his ankles come down from around the blond's legs until his feet are flat on the bed, toes curled. He shakes with the effort to hold himself still, teeth clenched. His eyes are misty and dazed when he opens them and searches for Tony’s face. “Yes Mr. Stark,” he says through his teeth. “I—I’ll try—”

Daniel snorts a little where he’s got his head in the crook of Peter’s neck, still placing wet kisses. “It really is like that, isn’t it?”

“What?” Peter breathes, distracted.

“You wish it was Tony Stark fucking you.”

Tony blinks. Peter shudders, eyes popping open.

“What?” Peter gasps. “I—_what_?”

Daniel resumes the grinding of his hips, the shock of his announcement waning the erection in the younger man’s pants. It’s simulated sex, the way he thrusts down, like they’re already undressed, like he’s stretched the kid open with his fingers and is balls deep inside him, thrusting to touch his belly button from the inside. The whole time, Peter’s eyes stare at the ceiling, wide and unseeing. “Yeah, that’s what gets you off, doesn’t it, baby? You like imagining dirty old men touching you and taking you, don’t you? It might as well be Tony fucking you right now, isn’t that right?”

Peter _bursts into tears_.

Tony crosses the room in three steps, planting a hand on Daniel’s shoulder and wrenching him off the bed. The younger man sprawls across the floor, tailbone thudding against the carpet, still dressed save for his shoes that he dropped off at the door. “Get out,” Tony says coldly.

“Jesus, man, you’re not allowed to touch me like that—”

“_Get out_, before I have you escorted off my property.”

“Fuck, I’m going. Christ. I don’t need all this Shakespearean bullshit anyway.” Daniel grabs his bag that he’d left at the foot of the bed, the one with the condoms and lube that he never got the chance to use. He gives Tony a cold look. “By the way, my fee is non-refundable. Don’t _ever_ ask for me again.”

“Be thankful if it’s just the door that hits you on the way out,” Tony says.

Peter is sitting on the bed cross-legged, weeping into his hands. His shirt rests abandoned on the floor somewhere near Tony’s armchair. Carefully, he edges to the bed and gingerly sits on the dark bedspread. Jesus, what a shitshow this turned out to be, he thinks to himself. He goes to place a hand on the kid’s shoulder but thinks twice, not wanting to touch the bare skin, not after what Banana Republic said to upset him so much. “Peter—I won’t ask if you’re okay, because I do have eyes and clearly you aren’t, but—are you _hurt_?”

Peter shakes his head. Tony breaths a small sigh of relief.

“Want me to chase him down and let him kiss my gauntlet? I can have FRIDAY stop the elevator with him in it.”

Peter gives a wet laugh. He draws his palms away from his face, and his eyes are red and tender, cheeks damp with tears. Wiping at them with the back of his hand, he shakes his head again. “No—that’s illegal, Mr. Stark. He was just doing his job.”

“The offensive dirty talk? That wasn’t in his job description. I’m sorry, kid. He shouldn’t have said those things to you.”

The young man won’t even look at him, staring down at where his bare ankles cross, sniffing. “It wasn’t offensive,” Peter mutters, stopping Tony mid-sentence.

“Then—?”

“Mr. Stark, I’m so sorry,” Peter says, fresh tears dripping down his cheeks and off of his pointed little chin. He wrings his hands, knuckles white. “I really messed things up. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“Peter, it’s okay,” promises Tony. “If anything, this is my fault. You just wanted more experience, and you trusted _me_ to find someone—”

Peter looks him in the eye. There's a heat there, angry coals stoked back to blazing. “God, Mr. Stark. You’re so stupid. Natasha warned me, but I said there was no way you’d be this stupid.”

“_Excuse me?_”

“Daniel was right,” Peter says, voice raising with every word. “When, when I touch myself—I imagine it’s _you_. When I was with him, I just wanted to pretend he was _you_. When I asked you if you knew anyone who would help me with, with kissing and sex, I wanted _you_ to offer, you dummy!”


	3. Chapter 3

“FRI—”

“_You’re not having a stroke!_” Peter shrieks. “What’s—what’s so hard to believe? You’ve been my hero since I was like, eight years old. I’ve been getting off to those old TED talks of yours since I was old enough to masturbate—okay, TMI, I know—but you’re so smart, and you’re so brave, and fuck, Mr. Stark, you’re like, so, _so_ hot, I don’t know what to do—and I got this dumb idea in my head that if I just asked, you’d offer, but I literally almost just had sex with some guy I don’t even know just because I was too scared to ask you myself, and I—I’m so sorry.”

Tony holds up a hand to stop the profuse rambling. His heart is pounding in his chest, but he doesn’t waste the breath asking FRIDAY if he’s having a heart attack. He pieces together the kid’s words with all the background information, the senseless things that he hadn’t been able to compute until he received this context. Brilliant though he may be, social contexts can often fall to the wayside. 

“I should have seen this coming,” Tony says. “I guess my rampant self-esteem issues might have pulled the wool over my eyes. I’m sorry. Jesus, kid, this has been one fucked up game of chicken. You almost lost your virginity for a bluff.”

Peter sighs. “It would have been worth it if _you_ had said yes. It would have been worth it even if it was, it was Daniel, you know? Because you were here, and a part of it. Kind of.”

“Yeah, no. Not worth it. And don’t tell anyone about that part of this—”

“Trust me, I won’t,” says Peter glumly, sniffing. “I’m sorry, Mr. Stark. Again.”

“Don’t be,” he says. He means it. Peter can’t possibly imagine how much he means it. Because the last sixty seconds have made him feel filled with helium. This must be how that dumb earnest child and his equally dumb hotheaded grandfather felt when they drank those fizzy-lifting drinks at the Wonka factory. Somehow, this incredible young man next to him_ sees something_ in him. Tony believes that Peter is the human equivalent of Mjolnir, some detector of worthiness. In the kid's hands and eyes, Tony is uplifted. He feels…_honored_. “Peter, look—”

“Don’t,” the kid groans, scrubbing at his eyes. “Please don’t give me the whole, _let’s stay friends_ speech or the _you're too young_ speech. All those speeches suck. Just—can’t we pretend this never happened?”

“Maybe you could,” Tony admits. “But I can’t. Friends—yeah, I want to be your friend. But I want more than that too.” The expression on Peter’s face when he peaks around his hands is one he will never forget, the shred of hope that blossoms and blooms there, prettier than any flower Tony’s ever seen. “You’ve got to know how extraordinary you are, and not just genetically. You’re smart. You’re brave. You’re attractive. If I got to be with you, I’d be an incredibly lucky man.”

Peter frowns. “Why am I sensing a but?”

“Because there is one. _But_—I’m an old man. I could take care of you financially, yes, but I’d do that anyway, no strings attached. You’re going to want someone younger, with less mileage, less wear and tear. You’re going to want someone different someday. Someone _better_. And contrary to your youthful belief: they’re out there waiting for you, kid. Someone who is everything you’ve ever dreamed of, and who is going to look at you like you hang the moon.”

“Is that how you look at me?” Peter asks, tears glittering in his lashes. “Like I hang the moon?”

Tony swallows.

Peter crosses the bed on his knees, one, two, awkward steps until he is flush with Tony’s side, and then hooking a leg over Tony’s lap. Tony isn’t as wide as Daniel was, but he is wide enough that Peter sits nearly flush on his lap, skinny jeans stretching. The weight is warm and solid, and Peter’s half naked, all abs and soft, pale skin that makes Tony’s fingers buzz just thinking about touching.

“Pete, don’t,” Tony groans, choosing a spot on the wall across the room (where a conveniently placed painting rests) and staring at it resolutely. God, the painting is hideous, something leftover from Pepper’s abstract art buying phase. It needs burned, needs dropped from the roof of the building, needs donated back to whatever museum it came from.

“Why not?” Peter asks softly. He rests his hands on Tony’s shoulders, kneeling up until his chest is in the way of Tony’s gaze. Not that Tony minds, really, because _fuck_—the kid is positively built. Peter relaxes his legs and whatever pressure he’d been using to avoid sitting on Tony’s lap settles onto Tony’s groin, where his traitorous, half-hard cock takes notice. Instinct has him reaching out to plant his wide hands across the narrow hips, and the skin burns him. It’s even softer than he imagined. “Even if you don’t think we should _be_ together. Why can’t we? If I want you, and somehow you want me?”

“You think I could look at you the same after fucking you, kid?” Tony asks lowly. “I can barely look at you as is because of all the compromising situations I’ve seen you in lately.”

Peter’s face flushes. “It doesn’t make any sense _then_ either. We want each other in all those ways, so why not _try_? Please, Mr. Stark. Please, let us try.”

And it always comes back to this, doesn’t it?

The fact that Tony _can’t say no to this kid._

He tilts his head back to look up at the ceiling and implore any divine deities to have mercy on him. The kid takes the opportunity to press his mouth to Tony’s jaw, just beneath where his facial hair ends. It’s been so long since Tony’s been with anyone that the contact alone has his eyes shutting. The fact that this is Peter makes it transcendental. He feels the warm wetness as Peter opens his mouth and traces where Tony dabs cologne in the morning, and then the gentle scrape of teeth that has him groaning from deep within his chest.

Peter whines at the sound. His hips begin to move, aborted little jerking thrusts that make him arch his back obscenely to try and connect their cocks, and when he does, it’s like lightning cracking up Tony’s spine, makes him hiss through his teeth and squeeze the kid’s hips to bruising.

“Please, Mr. Stark,” Peter pants in the older man’s ear. “’ve been dreaming about this. Please let me have it.”

“Take it then, kid,” Tony says. He uses his grip on Peter’s hip to help him move, to increase the force of their frantic grinding until Peter is giving gasping little pants with every breath, mouth slack. When he’s sure the kid will keep the pace on his own, he lets his hands move away from the narrow hips and slide over all the gorgeous skin. Peter naturally runs a degree or two higher than an unenhanced human, but now it feels obscene, dangerous, like they’re liable to catch a spark between them and burn the place down.

“T-Tony?” Peter pants, mouth still flush against the man’s neck. It’s the first time in memory that Tony can recall Peter calling him by his given name, and it’s—it’s everything he thought it might be. “I’m—I’m close—”

Tony groans, rolling his neck. “Go ahead. I can’t stop you. I won’t.”

“_Tony_,” Peter whines, drawing the name out obscenely. His hips stutter, desperately chasing a finish line that’s within sight. Tony takes pity on him and helps guide his hips again, thrusting his own up as best as he can in their upright position.

When Peter cums, he shudders all over, mouth open in a silent scream. A high, long noise slips from his throat, and he buries his face in the juncture between Tony’s neck and shoulder, hips slowing to move in long, leisurely strokes as his cock twitches in his confined pants, a burst of heat blooming between them. Tony commits it all to memory. It makes his head swim, his own neglected cock ache. He can’t help but kiss the crown of Peter’s head when the young man sags against him.

“I love you,” Peter murmurs into Tony’s damp skin.

Tony feels those same words bubbling in his throat, but now doesn’t feel like the right time to say them: not when he’s just given the young man his first orgasm at another human’s hands. Tony clutches the kid to him, breathing in the scent of him, filled with a sudden childish fear that if he lets him go—he might disappear. “Tell me that again in the morning, kid,” he says roughly.

He takes the pointed chin in his hand, tilts it up and (it’s not until the momentum has already caught a hold of him that he realizes this is their first kiss, their very first kiss) devours the kid’s mouth. He’s a starving man, and there’s no one who could blame him for it. He sips at Peter’s mouth like it’s a cup and he’s shaking with thirst, licks into that soft burning wetness of the younger man’s mouth. Peter tangles his fingers in Tony’s hair, tugging and tugging, whining as he shifts from one knee to another.

“Let’s get you out of those pants,” Tony says, parting just long enough for the words to slip out before reaching for the button on Peter’s skinny jeans. A firm hand catches his wrist, strong. Tony pulls away, eyes wide, fear sobering him—is he moving too fast? Did he overstep their boundaries? Did he somehow misinterpret the last five minutes (a little tough to believe considering the kid just came in his pants and whispered a touching declaration of love, but these days Tony puts nothing past himself)?

“No,” says Peter. He let’s go of Tony’s wrist and reaches for the man’s t-shirt. “Let’s even us out first.”

And oh—oh, that’s alright, then. He has a flashing moment of insecurity as the shirt goes over his head; he’s softer than he once was, and there is scarring where the arc reactor used to be, where battles have torn away his armor. The two of them could not be further alike, with Peter’s lean, pale, muscled body and Tony’s wider, tanned, scarred flesh. But Peter’s eyes practically roll when he’s got his burning palms flat on Tony’s pecs, running his hands all over the revealed skin (learning, he’s learning, Tony thinks).

“This isn’t fair,” Peter whines, leaning forward to open his mouth and plant it on the arch of Tony’s trapezius muscle. When he speaks, his tongue laps at Tony’s skin and nearly distorts the words. “You’re so fucking hot, Mr. Stark.”

“Tony,” Tony reminds him. He dips his fingers gently into the waistband of the kid’s skinny jeans. “Should we uneven the score again?”

Peter slips off of Tony’s lap and stands before him. There isn’t any shyness when he bends down and shucks the pants off of his lean legs. The underwear makes him hesitate—eyes flashing up towards where the older man is watching, heart in his throat, cock aching in its confines. Tony sees him steel himself before dropping the boxers too, using them to wipe clean his cock which is slowly returning to hardness. He doesn’t have anything to be ashamed of. Tony’s seen a fair share of cocks in his time, and Peter’s is remarkably pretty, average in length and girth, flushed pink as his bruised lips.

“What art museum did you escape from, again?” Tony asks, waving a finger up and down Peter’s body. “You know, the artwork isn’t supposed to leave the building—”

Peter’s face flushes, all the way down his neck and to his chest. “That’s rich, coming from you Mr. Stark.”

“Well, I’m rich—come here.”

Peter does. He comes to stand flush with the edge of the bed against his thighs. Being so close to Tony must excite him, because his cock lengthens rapidly even though he stands, patient and still while Tony peruses his body from the freckle above his abs to the way the hair on his thighs is lighter and softer than the hair on his calves and shins. The fire in him simmers, turned down from the boiling point. Soft, he remembers. He should be soft and gentle with this precious young man.

So Tony reaches out gently, runs his calloused fingers over the hill of one collar bone. Peter’s head lolls to the side like he’s too weak to hold it up. He shivers when Tony flattens his palm over his heart, dragging it until he rolls it carefully over one stiffened nipple. Peter’s mouth clicks shut on a whine, cock jerking between his legs.

“You’re sensitive here,” Tony remarks, taking one of the pale nipples between his fingers and rolling it.

“Yessir,” Peter says, his voice high and sweet.

Tony’s eyebrows lift, but the kid must not even see anything strange about what he’s said, because his eyes stay closed, face relaxed and in ecstasy. Tony begins to add pressure, soft little pinches that have the cock in front of him jerking and spitting precum onto the bed. From the young mouth pours a litany of silky noises that threaten to stoke the heat inside him back to a rolling boil—but Tony isn’t a young man. He isn’t inexperienced. He knows how to hold himself back, to watch his lover with the keen eyes of a scientist to discover what pleases them most.

The kid is too distracted to notice when Tony leans forward to lick the flat of his tongue across the neglected nipple. The noise he makes is somewhere between a shout and a groan, fingers digging into pale flesh where he has them laying flat on his thighs.

“God, Mr.—Tony. Please, don’t stop, please.”

Tony doesn’t. He strokes and pinches one nipple raw and then soothes it with his tongue, blowing cool air across the abused little buds until the kid shivers and whines.

“Am I bein’ too loud?” Peter asks through gasping breaths. “Just tell me to, to shut up if I’m annoying you—”

“There’s nothing annoying about you,” Tony promises. He takes the kid’s palm from where it’s leaving bruises on his leg and encourages him to palm Tony’s cock and God, Tony can feel the heat even through his jeans and boxers, the pressure is divine after so much neglect. “It drives me up the walls listening to you, kid. I’m trying to hear those noises, so don’t hold them back—but make sure I earn them. Got it?”

“Got it,” Peter whispers, smiling.

“I’m vocal too, is that going to turn you off?” asks Tony.

“I’m pretty sure there’s nothing about you that could turn me off.”

“Let’s not test that hypothesis.”

He places an open-mouthed kiss to the center of the kid’s chest and uses his hands to guide Peter back onto the bed. Standing, he doesn’t bother with any fanfare, stripping himself of his remaining clothes and adding to the heap at the foot of the bed. In his favor, Peter watches with wide eyes. When he reaches Tony’s cock, he _licks his lips. _

Tony climbs back onto the bed, and they tangle themselves together, laying side by side and kissing like teenagers the first time they’re left alone. Sometimes their cocks bump and Peter whines, hips arching.

“Should you get a condom?” Peter asks.

“I don’t think so.”

Peter blinks. “Oh—without one? That’s cool too. I mean, obviously—”

“No, I mean—I don’t think we should have sex tonight. Hey, no, don’t make that face. It doesn’t have anything to do with you. But all of your firsts shouldn’t happen in one night, kid. That isn't healthy. You should space them out.”

Peter sits up, eyes blazing, as he talks, he presses Tony back into the mattress, coming to sit on the flat of his abs. “Space them out? Okay then. But what’s the right spacing? A few days in between each milestone? A few weeks? That—that might work for somebody else. The schedule, thing. But this is _my_ schedule. I want you. Like, now. Tonight.”

Tony groans, hands naturally falling to the protruding hip bones. He dips his thumbs into the hollows and (curiously) coaxes Peter to rub forward and backward until the curve of his ass nudges against Tony’s aching cock. He wonders then; why wait? Peter wants it, Tony wants it, why shouldn’t they?

But of all his anxieties—and there are many, always, growing like mold beneath the floorboards of his brain—there is one that sobers him:

“What if you regret it in the morning?” Tony asks. He licks his lips, which feel a little like trembling. He tries to look the kid in the eyes, but his own keep falling, rising, desperate to be looking anywhere else so that Peter can’t see, can’t see inside him at what an anxious, scared, desperate old man he is.

Peter plants a palm flat above Tony’s navel. “I won’t. But if I did—that’d be okay too. Regrets aren’t the end of the world. Everybody has some, and life goes on. But look at me. Look at me: I won’t. I promise you.”

Tony’s eyes burn. His hands have gone from pressing bruises into those hips to rubbing his knuckles tenderly across the arch of one. “I can’t take that chance, kid. I can’t. This is more to me.”

Peter frowns. Carefully, he climbs off Tony, but doesn’t give the man chance enough to grow cold. Peter presses himself from collar to ankle along Tony’s side, coaxing the man’s arm around him until Peter is nestled there resting his head on the older man’s shoulder. He must be close enough for the kid to hear his pounding heart, because Peter presses a tender kiss against the skin closest to his mouth.

“How long do you want to wait?” Peter asks. “However long you need, I’m cool. Like, I waited nineteen years, I’m sure I could wait—well, _God_, not another nineteen years, I hope. Please, Mr. Stark, not nineteen more years.”

“Call me Mr. Stark again and I’m going to make it twenty. How about—in the morning. We’ll see how you feel in the morning.”

He feels the kid smile. “Alright,” he says. “But I don’t know how you expect me to get any sleep. This is like Christmas, only sexy.”

-

But somehow, they do.

Because Tony blinks his eyes open. He didn’t tell FRIDAY to activate Sunglasses At Night protocol, so the sun streams in through the window. He’s content to be still: before he moves, he doesn’t feel any of the aches and pains that come with getting older, doesn’t worry about the stress of his day, what might come. But beside him, something shifts, rustling the dark sheets—

_Peter_, lying awake, naked except for the sheet that covers his hips. He’s holding his phone in front of his face, but at the noise Tony makes, glances over the top to see that the older man has awoken. The phone slips forgotten between them.

“Good morning,” Peter murmurs, voice rough from sleep.

“Great morning,” Tony says, mouth twitching.

Peter sits up onto one elbow, curls a wreck. There’s a bruise on his neck, sucked there in ecstasy the night before. His entire body is a long, lean line that Tony wants to trace and kiss and worship. “Do you remember what you told me I could do in the morning?”

Tony rolls his eyes. His morning wood certainly remembers. “You’re going to be insatiable, kid. Alright. If you haven’t changed your mind, we can—”

It’s Peter’s turn to roll his eyes. “Not that, you perv. Don’t you remember? You said, 'tell me that again in the morning.' So:

“_I love you_,” Peter says. Those are big words, spoken so softly. The kid means them too. Tony sees: he _means_ them. Maybe he meant them last night too, shivering from his orgasm, but this, with the sunlight and the rumpled sheets and the sleep in the corners of Tony’s eyes to witness it? It’s different.

Tony reaches for the kid and coaxes him closer, kissing him soundly.

“I love you too,” Tony says, and all the things he’s ever doubted—this isn’t one of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> really wanted them to fuck but cage can't always get what she wants i guess.   
if there's interest, maybe i'll post a series of 'firsts' for them, in celebration of them finally getting to have sex   
comments and criticisms welcome.   
tumblr: cagestark

**Author's Note:**

> comments and criticisms welcome  
find me on tumblr @cagestark


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